Thanks…
Yeah it’s only taken me 16 years to accept it- I’m stubborn like that
Here’s a funny story… I’m visiting some family in LA for christmas and I was down hitting a few balls at a local range. I was smacking a few with my new Mac persimmon that just came in the mail and a little group gathered around after hearing the noise. It was kind of funny. I’ve also got an old set of Wilson Staff Tour Blades, the first edition of them, they’re pretty sweet. Anyway, one of the guys that was watching me hit my persimmon decides to take a look in my bag. He fiddles around with a few of the blades, then turns to me and says, “who the hell do you think you are, John Erickson?!” I had to laugh… I thought you guys would get a kick out of that one… I’m calling the phenomenon, Lag’s Cult of Persimmonality… I like puns
Cheers,
Have a good christmas everyone…
B
We had a few groups playing this past Sunday and I was in the first group out. After teeing off on the 12th hole (which parallels the 11th), one of my buddies in the group behind us was walking up 11 about 200 yards away. He yells to me while he throws a ball he’d just found into the 12th fairway and says “it’s for you!”.
I get to it and expect it to be an old Tour Balata to go with the persimmon I’m playing. It’s actually a ProV1x but it’s personalized:
Here at ABS we would call this a full roll swingers release… TGM would call this horizontal hinging which is prescribed for swingers also. Moe did not drive his right arm straight actively… Moe always talked about passive hands too. There is no resistance to CF.
This would be classic ABS hitting… clubface not rolled… hands are cutting left…upper arms packed onto the body… right arm is bent… left arm also showing a pulling or resisting CF. This is orbit pull…
Moe is not pulling the club from it’s outward expanding nature… Hogan is doing the opposite…
hence… swinger and hitter…
I understand there is confusion in the Two main camps of TGM on this… Doyle-McHatton vs Blake and others…
then there is the Morad camp also…
Here we would be more inline with the Morad ideals… swinging is out to the right, full roll.
Hitting cutting left around the corner…
I really don’t care what people consider what, as long as we understand “that this means that” or the other way around.
No sense arguing about it…
When I used to talk to Paul Smith about this… whatever he said I knew was the opposite definition even within TGM camp from the Doyle Mc Hatton version.
The departure point here at ABS is that the hit is done with the hands… not the right elbow…
Hogan and Snead would be describing an ABS “hit” by talking about hitting hard with the hands at the bottom of the swing… so students here use the traditional terminology from the Hogan -Snead era.
Lag
I am so glad you finally decided to get this one straight. If Homer Kelly totally missed this pattern why does it have to fit into his terminology.
Well, I read this post by Bomgolf, Lag’s reply and watched a video posted on another thread about Moe Norman hitting balls. I had a MAJOR light bulb moment: I have been pivoting my body way too early. This has been happening every time but for a couple of games I now remember when I thought I should drop my arms first going to the ball and then pivot and , not surprisingly, that’s when with my improvised swing I shot my personal bests of 89 first and then 88. How did I forget that feeling? It’s incredible how something that feels right and it’s shown to be that way by the results goes back into the back of our mind substituted by new tips from a coach or a well intentioned game partner (shut up well intentioned game partner!! )…
So today I went to the range for the first time ever since I joined ABS and I started with my (Hume Hway - for Twomasters…) Hogan sand wedge - heck I love you Hogan SW, let’s never fight again… .-
I concentrated on holding, holding and holding a bit more the lag and going at the ball with my arms and hands without pivoting and starting the pivot a moment after impact, or so it felt, finishing the downswing with that vertical shaft I saw in Norman’s videos and that I hear talked about as PV#5.
UNBELIEVEABLE. Power. Compression. Consistency.
Then I went to my Hagens and all of a sudden I couldn’t feel the heads, much lighter than that beautiful SW. I now know I need more weight on them to feel them on the way down. It took probably about 20 shots to get used to them whilst tying to hold the lag and wait to pivot until the right time.
Anyway I just thought I should share this because I am sure I got this from the drills I am doing plus the great information on this forum. Thanks to Lag and to you all for making this a great place to really learn how to swing a club.
You wrote with respect to the Ben Hogan photograph-: “This would be classic ABS hitting… clubface not rolled… hands are cutting left…upper arms packed onto the body… right arm is bent… left arm also showing a pulling or resisting CF. This is orbit pull…”
One of the problems I have with TGM-hitting is that it is a cross-line procedure. Homer Kelley states that a TGM hitter should take his hands to the top of the backswing and load against the right elbow. From that position, the idea is to institute a straight line thrust action with the hands straight towards an aiming point (usually near the ball) and this gives rise to the idea of an angle of approach technique (which is a cross-line procedure where one “feels” that one is hitting towards first base).
I much prefer the idea of being a swinger-hitter, where the club path is circular in nature - a circular arc that moves from in-to-square-to-in. One starts with a rotary pivot action (as recommended by Hogan) and that pivot action helps drop the hands to waist level as one starts to release PA#4.
Note that PA#4 is starting to release in image 4 and 5.
From that waist-high location (image 5), one has essentially entered the zone, which Hogan called the “hitting zone”.
From that waist-high location, one would drive-load the club through the impact zone. The idea would be to swing on a shallow plane, like Hogan, which would cause the club to “appear” to swing left soon after impact. The advantage of choosing a shallow clubshaft plane through impact, is that it allows for a better coordination (more synchronous coordination) between the rotating torso and the swinging arms. By maintaining a drive-loading thrust pressure to P4 (or beyond) one can eliminate “wobble” through impact and also eliminate the timing problem associated with a centrifugal release. I think that hitting through impact allows a golfer to be more in control of his club, which should result in more consistent ball-striking.
John - You refer to Moe’s hand alignment post-impact as a full swinger’s release.
There is one problem with your claim. A skilled swinger would never bend the left wrist - because the left arm is pulling the club through impact in a horizontal hinging action, and the left wrist would remain flat and vertical to the ground during the early followthrough. I believe that his left wrist is bending because he is applying a hitting action (drive loading action) with his right arm/hand through impact.
Jeff
I think you have almost found the way but the modules are the way to reach it. It will be extremly diificult and long process to encorporate all of this doing full swings. Welcome to ABS.
[quoteBy maintaining a drive-loading thrust pressure to P4 (or beyond) one can eliminate “wobble” through impact and also eliminate the timing problem associated with a centrifugal release. I think that hitting through impact allows a golfer to be more in control of his club, which should result in more consistent ball-striking.
Surely the left wrist is bending because he has “dead” hands which do not resist the wrist roll? That would seem more logical to me than it being caused by hitting.
I am fully aware that maintaining a drive-loading pressure through the impact zone also ensures that one maintains shaft flex. However, I don’t believe that there is any advantage to having shaft flex at impact in terms of swing power. I think that the advantage of hitting (drive-loading) is the fact that one is always controlling the direction and speed of movement of the club. The great disadvantage of “pure” swinging is the fact that it has (by definition) a centrifugal release phenomenon, which is very timing-dependent.
You asked-: “Jeff, how do you know it is PA#4 that is being released, and not PA#1 (straightening right elbow)?”
Two reasons.
In his Five-Lessons book, Hogan stated that he pulls the intact power package down to waist level as a consequence of his pivot-action - he stated that the arms get a “free ride” and that he doesn’t use his arms in the early downswing. Secondly, note that the right elbow remains fully bent during this motion of bringing the intact power package down to waist level, and the right forearm flying wedge (red) still maintains its “fixed” relationship to the left arm flying wedge (yellow). The right elbow only starts to straighten when the club gets down to the vicinity of P3.
Note how he keeps the right elbow bent at a 90 degree angle - even though he is releasing PA#4 (left arm moves down-and-away from the upper chest wall). His right elbow only starts to straighten after his hands reach waist level.
You also stated with respect to Moe Norman’s swing-: “Surely the left wrist is bending because he has “dead” hands which do not resist the wrist roll? That would seem more logical to me than it being caused by hitting.”
In a TGM-swinger, the hands are passive in the downswing and followthrough (from P3 to P4). However, the torso and left arm are not passive. During the followthrough, the left arm/left forearm/flat left wrist/hand and clubshaft all rotate at the same rpm due to i) external rotation of the left humerus in the left shoulder socket while ii) the left shoulder socket is moving up-and-away around to the left. That causes the flat left wrist/hand to rotate leftwards - while ensuring that the flat left wrist/hand remains vertical to the ground.
Note how Tiger Woods continues to move his left arm and left shoulder socket during the followthrough - this combined motion allows the left wrist to remain flat while it rotates around to the left.
Because Moe stood so far from the ball and swung on a shoulder plane… closer to a one plane action than most… I don’t see a big reason for the left wrist to flip over and stay flat as other swingers do from a more standard ball position.
Moe’s hands do roll hard, but much later than most swingers, because of the way he sets his swing plane up, and I believe this is actually why it works.
If Moe used the same swing, but set up like Mac O’Grady, I think you would see something very different, and not nearly as effective… assuming he used the same release protocol. (not Mac’s)
Then it would look like the other TGMers who spray the ball all over the lot.
TGM’s #4 pressure point again not a complete concept because there is pressure applied in both arm pits, unless you take the right hand completely off the club…
The pressures can be distributed in different amounts between shoulder sockets, but both shoulders are moving…
Can you really turn the left shoulder without the right one moving?
There is a bit of independent swiveling action available to both shoulders, but when you are talking about a 180 degree rotation from top to finish… you simply can’t move one shoulder that far and not the other… so they both have their protocols for movement together, and the pressures associated with that movement, and the levers they are empowering.
The degree of pressure from one shoulder to another does also change… and is in constant flux. If you really want to analyze it… it’s not as simple as people think… but if you train the body through drills, then you can basically forget all that stuff and focus on improving your rotation and how things are sequenced without analyzing much of anything. You simple don’t have the time to think about this stuff when you are striking a golf ball… it needs to gradually work it’s way into your swing’s DNA over time… slowly and with a lot of hard work.
Talking about Moe and his swing, I sometimes see it as a minor miracle that he was so consistent and straight. One of the things that gets over looked is the power of his mind, and how the simplicity of his concept of how he swung, simplified his thinking and gave him so much confidence. In my opinion, the physical shape of his swing was different to the mental shape he had of it. But the mental shape was so simple and so clear to him that it was essentially foolproof in his mind, and that certainty bred more certainty and then they fed eachother. We’d probably get more from trying to emulate his thinking than his swing.
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